Comments on Amazon

Although I have sold a few books and some Kindle downloads I am not getting many comments on Amazon yet. I put this down to the fact that there are a lot of pages to slog through and possibly that people are being too kind to tell me what they really think.

I have gleaned one 5* review from someone who will remain anonymous and who pointed out the perils of too much boring detail. Ah well!

It is hard to start marketing something which seems to have gone off on its own and doesn't want to belong to me any more. I wrote it because I wanted to and now telling the world about it is difficult and a little embarrassing.

Perhaps when the summer is over and I am shut up in my shed in the rain I will be a bit more energetic about telling the world. Until then my excuse is that without reviews I can't start to shout loudly to the world in general.

Muziris and the Borabadur connection.

For me the romance of the "Periplus of the Erythraen Sea," the sailors' handbook which listed the trade commodities, routes and ports from the Mediterranean to India is contained in the mystery of its language. Names have changed, as have the trade goods on which earlier civilisations depended. The loss of names and growth and death of ports is one reason why it has been so hard to find Muziris and why its location is still contentious with some.

"Muziris, Nelcynda and Bacare;
(to which large ships come for pepper and malabathrum).
Exports:
Pepper, produced in Cottonara
Fine pearls in great quantity
Ivory
Silk cloth
Spikenard from the Ganges
Malabathrum from the interior
Transparent stones of all kinds
Diamonds
Sapphires
Tortoise-shell, from Chryse and from near-by islands"

The goods listed in the export list show that these three ports on the West of present day Kerala were not only sending out native products, but were trading in commodities imported from elsewhere. The pepper was produced in the area around the Pamba River, named Cottonara by Pliny the Elder, and the malabathrum grew in Himalayas and had a long journey South, probably via Cape Cormorin, along with the spikenard.
The silk, pearls and precious stones probably came from present-day Sri Lanka and China and the tortoise shell from as far away as the Phillipines, which was known to the Greeks.

I found a clue as to how these goods travelled such enormous distances routinely on a visit to Java a couple of years ago. A panel in a huge frieze round one of the levels of the temple at Borabadur looked as though it had been sculpted far more recently than the 9th Century.

One Borabadur Ship

Borabadur ship by Michael J. Lowe

Archaeologists reconstructed this ship and its voyage to Madagascar and Africa in 2003. Less well known than the Chinese Junks which traded all over the Indian Ocean, these boats were trading half way across the world in the 8th Century.
The web of trade was vast and worth huge amounts of money. Muziris must have been a very rich place indeed.

Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Digging around the internet for Muziris-related information I was suddenly struck by the lack of anything about the Fort Koch-Muziris Biennale. The last one, in 2012, was a great success, but this year the event, due to start in December, is not out there yet. The biennale web site has artist interviews and reports of the 2012 event, but there is no programme. The link on the website is an impressive, completely blank page, no headers or information..

I shall probably be in Kochi in February and may catch the last of the exhibitions. It is probably the usual last-minute dash of Indian planning, but I feel uneasy on behalf of the international audience and exhibitors who should know by now what they are exhibiting and where. It is no small thing to mount an art exhibition at home, let alone a flight away. After the last success it would be sad to see this going the way of all tourist initiatives in Kerala, lots of hot air, a great launch and fanfare and then a slow sink into obscurity.

Phase Two of the Spice Trail, taking in the Muziris Heritage Project was launched in February with the creation of a new government company to oversee its development. That gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach too. Again, the web is mostly silent on current developments, apart from the usual "there will be" statements about new boat jetties etc. The original sites are being promoted, but the interesting developments are those by private individuals taking advantage of the heritage concept and creating their own spice trails within the state. There is so much to see that this may well serve the interests of "heritage" and tourism in the state far more effectively than the grandiose, stalled state projects.

The joys of the road trip

Every trip we took to India seemed to be a road trip. The distances are sometimes not huge, but the time taken to get from A to B is stretched out by the state of the roads and the mass of other vehicles trying to prevent your progress. Indian roads are renowned for their lethality, lack of rules and general anarchy and we experienced this every time we landed. Once you have acclimatised to the prevailing culture of trusting to whatever god you have faith in, a journey by car is a delight of strange sights and happenings and the time goes quickly.
A source of entertainment is always the other road users. The horror show of whole families belting along a major road on one motorcycle, with the baby balanced on the handlebars soon loses its nerve-racking shock value and the novelty of the various types of vehicle provides an amusing backdrop to the endless tarmac. That is if you have tarmac on your particular road.
Buses, lorries, autorickshaws, jeeps, cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and bullock carts all go about their frenetic daily tasks. These are some of my favourite transport photographs.

The sleeping cart driver

Electioneering- make sure your voice is heard!

The daily commute

I was waiting for this man to take off!

Camel rides

Pig on a bike

Whatever next?

Now that I actually have the book in paperback form the question arises, what next? I never wrote the thing to get it read, particularly, but now it is out there I feel I ought to do something to let people know there is yet another travel / history book about India for them to enjoy.
Publishing was hard enough, but marketing is yet another new game to play and one with which I am not exactly comfortable.
I recently had the experience of sitting in a room with several acquaintances who enthused over the fact that I had written a book. Some of them had been to South India and were genuinely interested, but others seemed to think that writing a lot of words was an achievement in itself. All very embarrassing!
The dreaded Amazon gives many tips and articles on marketing, all of which hinge around having reviews on the site. I think that is going to be a very slow process. It is not a short book and most of the people who have bought it so far (thank you friends!) as far as I can tell, may not necessarily have bought or read yet another travel / history book about India. They have bought it because they know me.
I feel as though I have stripped off in public. I really wouldn't mind severe or negative reviews, I don't think, as long as they were honest. No reviews at all is really scary. Letting it sink without trace is such a relaxing idea!

A Tour of Fort Kochi

One of the most attractive features of Fort Kochi is that there are things which change little over the years. Our first encounter with the autorickshaw drivers who have specific pitches in the tourist areas was on our very first visit and most of the crowd who hang around the Malabar House Hotel are still there.
Salim, with his clean and well-maintained rickshaw is one of the most ubiquitous and persistant. He was our "Ferrari Man" who rebuked us, he kidnapped me and tok me on a whirlwind tour of the tourist shops one afternoon and always stops to chat.
On our last visit, in February this year, there he was. I stopped to chat, and although he probably didn't remember me stopped whenever he saw us and introduced us to his current ride.
His tours of Kochi are recorded by a satisfied customer on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPrxsVlDTEkthisvideo

Great tour of the spice market!

At last the paperback is going to appear.

I've finally pressed the button on the paperback of my book and it will be out at the end of the week! These last couple have weeks have been like one of those dreams where you keep trying to do something and then get sent back to the beginning to do it again.
My proof copies arrived in three days, printed and delivered from the US and it was really weird to have a solid copy in my hands. The cover has worked OK, much to my astonishment, and I thought that, after four proof reads, I was home and dry.
I found a mistake the first time I opened the book and all the page numbers on the first couple of chapters had gone squiffy- again. I was rapidly losing the will to live, when enter Richard. My friends from Stroud arrived in their caravan for a week of forts and military tunnels, and while not crawling around underground and when it was raining they volunteered to proof read for me. Richard used to edit very long technical documents and in no time the poor old proof copy was bristling with markers and covered in pencil. Just what was needed! He did a very thorough and accurate job and I can't say how grateful I am.
He didn't get all of the typos, inconsistencies and bad grammar, however, as I proof read it again, for the fifth time and found a couple more daft things. Then back to Amazon to fight their review process and go round in circles a couple more times before I finally pressed the button today!
This is it folks, warts and all and very scary.
It will appear in about three to five days and then the real work begins if I want anyone to buy it. That's a good question.